Category Archives

On the 5th of October, WICS held a social event where anyone could come socialize and meet the WICS Board members for this school year! There were about 29 attendees who came to our event, which was located in Aldrich Park. Underclassman and new transfer students were able to ask questions about what WICS is like, how to get more involved, how are the courses for being an ICS major, and so on. Everyone participated in a social activity which involved remembering the person on your left and right names. There were also a couple of students who were playing catch with a frisbee! If you missed out on this event hopefully you can go to the next one and thanks for coming by!

On the 29th of September, WICS hosted a Mentorship Mixer event. There were over 85 attendees who came to the event with 39 mentors and 47 mentees.

First everyone sat down and got a enjoy a quick presentation by Sam Applebaum, our internal vice president on how the mentorship program would be run this year. Then, Sam invited all the mentors to line up and present about themselves to all of the mentees. Each mentor mentioned their major, jobs, and their car status to tempt mentees into choosing them as their mentors.

Then everyone split up by group and the mentors and mentees all got a chance to mingle with one another and chat for the rest of the night. With this chance to get to know each other face to face, each mentee and mentor will hopefully have some good ideas on who to pick as their partner!

In Week 1 of the new 2016 – 2017 school year WICS hosted our very first general meeting! Our normal meeting place of DBH 6011 was packed full with over 115 attendees.

Attendees got enjoy some free pizza and refreshments along with learning about all the events WICS will be hosting this upcoming school year. Some of the new things introduced were: our new membership option, our revamped mentorship program, and all of our upcoming events!

If you missed out on this meeting, you can learn more all about the stuff we talked about here on our website, and our Facebook page.

The Women in Information and Computer Sciences (WICS) at University of California, Irvine is proud to announce that we have been awarded the Trailblazer Award through the National Center for Women & Information and Technology (NCWIT) and Google.org! This $15,000 grant will go towards creating an “Explore ICS” Program for undergraduate undeclared students. Recruitment for this program will begin in the fall and applications will be released in mid-fall quarter. Accepted students will have access to the following:

Peer mentorship

Exploratory workshops

Tour at a technical company

Additionally, this program will be heavily evaluated and assessed by Kate Lehman, a doctoral candidate at UCLA, for its impact on undeclared students, and by Katherine Lo, a graduate student at UCI, for its impact on mentors.

Hello all! Here’s a recap of the events WICS has been hosting for the past few weeks on campus. Week 4 WICS hosted a study session for around 22 members who came out to study with each other. During the middle of midterms season, it’s always nice to have some people from the same majors and classes to study with. We hope that all of you are done with midterms and studying well for finals now! Come de-stress tonight for a little bit at the ICS Potluck and have some fun socializing and playing board games with other members!

On Monday of Week 6, WICS hosted a Yahoo Interview Workshop during which approximately 40 members received great information and tips about the do’s and don’ts regarding the interview and hiring processes. Members left the meeting feeling more confident and less nervous about the interviewing process in general. Much thanks to our Yahoo representative who spent time with us to lead us in a successful and informative workshop!

Week 7 WICS had a crepe booth and a night of bowling with some Google representatives. Thank you to all who came out to help run the booth and support the club by buying some delicious crepes! Members also had a fun time bowling and interacting with some people who work at Google. We hope to have more of these fun and informative events in the future to allow members to network with representatives from tech companies. Much thanks to the Google representatives who came out to spend time and network with our WICS members!

WICS and Pariveda Solutions representatives hosted a fun, interactive workshop on April 11th to help train our members in understanding what to do and how to think in a case study based interview. After a short introduction of the company, WICS members organized into groups to solve a specific case study problem together, and two of the groups got the chance to present their findings and solutions. All of our members learned a lot in regards to tackling a case study problem, asking questions during this type of interview, and contributing to teamwork and collaboration overall. We’d like to thank the representatives for their time in helping us host an informative and successful workshop!

On the 13th of April, WICS hosted a LinkedIn event that introduced students to Lean In and what it meant to be apart of a Lean In circle. There were over 30 students who attended the info session! The Lean In representatives, Michelle Carrega and Kunbi Adeyemo, lead an activity in which each group of students would learn more about their others in their group by answering questions about themselves and sharing their experiences. The activity was a huge success in which most people did enjoy participating in! The activity was meant to show how people in a small, unfamiliar group can have a deeper connection with each other. Following the activity, Kunbi presented an informative presentation of how students can form a chapter at UCI and start their own circles as well. This event showed how beneficial it can be to have students circles, allowing members to help each other by creating monthly meet ups for discussions and check ups on their process of achieving their goals.

WICS kicked off the 2016 Spring Quarter on Monday the 28th with pizza and some general announcements for the quarter. Co-presidents Angela Liu and Stephanie Eng announced the recently elected new board members for next year. The new T-shirt design was also presented along with some of the future events the club is planning on hosting. There were approximately 40 WICS members in attendance at this meeting and many of them won some cool swag that the club raffled off. We hope to see these faces and more at our future events. Stay tuned for what’s coming up in WICS during this quarter!

On Wednesday, February 25, WICS hosted an Adobe Photoshop workshop where students were able to learn the basics to get started. We had our very own Alicia Xu, UCI’s student representative of Adobe, to lead the workshop. This was her first time teaching and she did an excellent job! There were around 30 people who attended and were ready to learn. Alicia went over what an artboard was, how to add shapes, change colors, add layers and images, using selection tools like the lasso, and drawing with brushes. Overall, the event went really well! Free Adobe swag was given out to people who answered questions correctly or asked Alicia questions. Someone even asked if there would be more workshops for intermediate and advanced users, so we could possibly follow up with that in the future.

On Monday, February 8, WICS and ACM co-hosted an info session with Originate where students were able to learn different interview tips and tricks, and also about the company as a whole. There was a surplus of pizza, so the event started off with everyone on a full stomach. People from originate talked about the work atmosphere, their experiences there and what they expected from students/recent grads that aspire to work there in the future. One of the staff also gave a small introduction to an improved version of CSS called Flexi. She led us to the basics, and at the end of her presentation, she taught us through how to make a simple web page, using some of the new techniques and terms that we just learned. We ended the night with a student solving a problem that would most likely be given at an Originate interview and also some networking.

WICS and WIL (Women in Leadership) co-hosted a workshop with Deloitte Consulting on Friday, February 5 from 10:30 am – 12:30 pm. The session started with an introduction to the company. Then, some of their key players, such as Tanya Dancekelly, the Principal at Deloitte Consulting, spoke about their work-life balance, their time leading to Deloitte, their college years, and other topics from Q&A. It was both a pleasure and an inspiration to hear from such amazing and successful female leaders.

Afterwards, Deloitte wanted to give the students in the room a taste of the consultant work. First, they started with a presentation about what it means to be a consultant, the work involved, and tips for being a great consultant. Then they have students break off into groups to work on a sample case about consolidating data when switching to a new data management application. Deloitte mentors were present to explain (e.g. what is ERP?) and give helpful hints and students practice, essentially, approaching an interview question.

The event wrapped up with networking and delicious sandwiches from Corner Bakery.

Deloitte Consulting is looking for juniors to join their internship program. Their posting is found on Zotlink as Summer Scholar Intern – Business Technology Analyst. The deadline to submit your resume is February 18, 2016.